UPDATE: New Monday afternoon numbers from the secretary of state show Democratic turnout now 6 percentage points ahead of Republicans. The GOP is making up ground, but so far not a lot. Combined with the growth in Democratic registration this year, this is an ominous trend for Republicans on Tuesday.

Democratic ballot returns in Oregon continue to strongly outpace Republican returns, according to secretary of state figures as of 8 a.m. Monday.

With Democratic turnout now up to 61 percent of party registrants, that's seven percentage points higher than the Republicans. That's the same gap we saw on Friday and just a point less than the 8-point gap on Thursday.

I talked with several Republican insiders over the weekend who insisted that GOP turnout had also lagged behind Democratic turnout in 2004 in the week before the election but caught up by election day. One Democrat who had worked on turnout efforts in 2004 said that's not what his numbers show (the state didn't keep these statistics then, so I can't check a non-partial source).

Whatever the case, it's now increasingly possible that the Democrats will turn out in higher percentages than Republicans - the first time that will have happened in Oregon since at least 1964. Check page 8 of this PDF for historical turnout by party.